Strapping onto a board or clicking into skis and sending yourself down a mountain is maybe one of the more dangerous things you can do but it’s just so much fun! With sports like this, injuries happen and unfortunately there is no “injury prevention program”. However, spending time in the gym building base strength and cardio can help reduce your risks of injury and even help you bounce back faster when they occur.
It’s no secret that some of my skiers and snowboarders don’t start off itching to get into the gym. They grew up on the mountains and enjoy spending all the time they can outdoors. But, anyone who has been in the industry for a while will tell you that taking care of yourself by building strength and conditioning is key to a longer career and in turn, more time doing what you love.
According to a meta-analysis of high school soccer injuries, the average rate of ACL injuries is 4.4% for women and 1.2% for men. These are on par with the highest ACL injury rates in field sports. Skiing however is a whole different animal. At my job our skiers and snowboarders ACL injury rates over the last 10 years have been 6.5%. If you look specifically at Freesking (halfpipe, slopestyle and big air) this number jumps up to a massive 17.5%!!!
We know skiing in general isn’t great on your knees, but why is freesking so much higher than every other discipline?! I believe it’s because freesking is one of the youngest sports currently in the Olympics. To me, this means a culture to physically train outside of skiing has not taken root. The sport is rapidly progressing with younger and younger skiers throwing bigger and bigger tricks. Most of these kids grew up only skiing and have the technical skills to make it big, but not the robust body to take the impacts. This leads to a spike in all injuries and due to log levers on their feet, specifically knee injuries.
My overall message is that if you are skiing for fun or in a competition, make time to train off the hill too! If you’re stronger you can take bigger hits, if you are well-conditioned you can recovery between runs and be fresh at the end of the day. When this increased fitness occurs, injuries decrease and the overall time on the hill, doing what you love, increases. It’s really a win win, and in older athletes its common sense. Stay healthy out there!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5386612/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26657853
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